New research from the University of Kentucky, the University of Technology Sydney and the University of Illinois-Chicago has discovered that consumers respond differently to favorable and unfavorable treatment at the hands of an artificial intelligence (AI) agent versus another human.
AI agents have been adopted in a range of consumer domains to handle customer transactions including retail, travel, ride and residence sharing, legal and medical services. As these agents become more advanced, their processing capabilities and labor cost advantages are enabling companies to transition away from human representatives to more AI-based responses.
The research found that when a product or service offer is worse than expected, consumers respond better when dealing with an AI agent. By comparison, when an offer that is better than expected is made, consumers respond more favorably to a human agent.
“This happens because AI agents, compared to human agents, are perceived to have weaker personal intentions when making decisions,” said Aaron Garvey, professor at University of Kentucky. “That is, since an AI agent is a non-human machine, consumers typically do not believe that an AI agent’s behavior is driven by underlying selfishness or kindness.”
Consumers see AI agents lacking selfish or benevolent intentions whereas a lack of trust may be present in a favorable offer, the research found.
Additionally, the team found that designing an AI agent to appear more humanlike can change consumer response. A service robot that appears more humanlike has a more favorable response to better-than-expected offers than a more machine-like AI agent without human features.
So, what does this mean for the future of companies using these AI agents?
For marketing employees that need to deliver bad news, an AI representative will improve that customer’s response. This would be the best approach for negative situations such as:
- Unexpectedly high price offers
- Cancellations
- Delays
- Negative evaluations
- Status changes
- Product defects
- Rejections
- Service failures
- Stockouts
Good news, however, should be delivered by a human for outcomes like rebates, upgrades, service bundles, exclusive offers, loyalty rewards and customer promotions.
The full research can be found in the Journal of Marketing.
